


bloodstones and broomsticks

by JeanSouth



Category: Servamp (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M, Vampires, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 06:47:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8239879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanSouth/pseuds/JeanSouth
Summary: Misono is a really good student witch. At least, he's really good on paper. In practice it's sort of another story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm making the unwise decision of starting another multi-chapter fic but uh please enjoy and please note that tags/ratings may change as I actually figure out where this is going

“You summoned a _butterfly_.”

The voice, which was a fairly unpleasant one, was most certainly, absolutely, undoubtedly _mocking_ Misono.

“I thought you were summoning a _vampire_?”

Two voices? Clearly, Misono's early morning Gregorian chanting had been an unrivalled failure (yes, unrivalled even by summoning a creature that was, distinctly, not a vampire) to have so many witnesses to his very bad afternoon.

“I would appreciate it if you left,” he said finally, arms crossed and turning around, feet set evenly apart and shoulders squared. Chin up, not frowning but still looking displeased, and as much ice and command to his voice as he could summon. It echoed slightly in the cold stone room, completely bare of wallpaper or carpets thanks to past... incidents. “Now.”

That, at least, was something he succeeded at in leaps and bounds – a terrifying image. It also explained his distinct lack of friendships. It did not, however, explain why his spell circles just never worked. Or his spells. Or his potion-crafting. His theory tests were perfection incarnate.

“Where on earth did I summon you from?” he sighed, kneeling down next to the exhausted-looking butterfly. It was about the size of his hand with a distinct mixture of pink and black gracing its wings. Not one mimicking a predator, then, but much more superior at camouflage. Butterflies were, from an evolutionary standpoint, fascinating. Questions ran through his mind as the wings twitched slightly. How much colour did butterflies see? How smart were they, to know what predators feared? To know exactly how to look like a flower? How did they evolve to be so perfectly in synch with that around them? He sighed a bit; he had spell circles to draw and books to read. “A place in Norway that sounds distinctly like the poor way I pronounce hell?”

Rolling his eyes, Misono scooped the butterfly up in his hands and set it on the table, creating a small dust-barrier out of his sweater before he vigorously swept away the chalk markings of the spell circles, making them indistinguishable even to his most talented professor. Tugging his sweater back on after beating it vigorously (or as vigorously as possible; Misono distinctly lacked upper body strength), he hesitated for a second, wavering back and forth.

“I suppose it's a good thing I summoned you,” he sighed eventually, rummaging in the workroom cupboard for a bowl with high sides to keep the wind from sweeping away his apparent new pet. “You're much more portable than a vampire, and an infinite amount less illegal.”

All in all? It was probably good luck that he'd messed this up.

_Hello, father. It appears I've summoned a creature from the Smouldering Depths and forgot to add in the appropriate layers of Binding runes, so it's more of business relationship than slavery, really. He'll be living with us. I've named him Lily._

He could imagine his father's face; it was the one he always imagined with vindication when he came close to being sure he'd win their next chess match. The improbability of a vampire made it laughable, ridiculous, even.

“I'm naming you Lily,” he told the butterfly, cupping his hand over the top of the bowl to try to take the edge off any wind that passed by in his wait for the car coming to pick him up. Maybe having a mascot would improve his magic, or bring him some beautiful Other full of wise advice and adventure. Haha, sure.

-

At home it was cloak off, hat off, gloves off, flexing his fingers against the lines left by the seams on the inside of the thick leather that made them fit quite so perfectly. At his wrists the colour changed abruptly to a shade darker where the sun was allowed to touch. After all, all spell-casting was done in the academy cellars where the walls were thick, old stone surrounded by nothing but the earth for miles around the academy.

(With the exception, of course, of rune-covered water mains and electric wires and other such things – magical engineering at its finest for some of the finest students in the country.)

It was only customary to hide a young witch's hands; overwhelming power just coming to them, hormones raging wildly, and too little life experience to really control anything. He only had them off when spellcasting or in his own rooms; when he slept it was instead soft cotton gloves to ward off outbursts from nightmares, embroidered with more of the same warding runes his leather gloves had.

Taking up his afternoon spot in the window seat, he ran his bare fingers over the soft white faux fur of the cushion closest to him, marvelling again at the feeling, of how  _soft_ it truly was. Disconnected from  _feeling_ so much of his day made it all the more enthralling when he could. His fingers stopped abruptly and his head jerked up at a flash of black to the left of him, his free hand jerking up to bat away at anything seeking to attack him, and gasping when he was adeptly outmanoeuvred.

With a soundless flutter, his new butterfly settled on his hand on the cushion, wings splaying as if it was relaxing.  _Right_ . He'd forgotten he'd brought something with him and left it on the entrance table. 

Wasn't that a bit cruel of him? If he were taken home and left behind, he'd be hurt -

_(was in fact, hurt when he rushed home to find his father abroad again, in meetings again, gone again)_

\- so he leaned in and gently drew the very tip of his index ever-so-gently down his butterfly's back, stilling when it turned and examined him, its minute legs carrying it softly across the back of his hand to sit there as if it excepted more. An apology?

Logically, Misono knew, of course, that butterflies didn't have emotions, but instead, a physical urge to find food and mate and _live_ , but could he really be blamed for lifting his hand to look more closely at its small face, and whisper out an apology? If anyone did want to blame him, they'd have to find out first, and no one ever would.

“ _Sorry_ ,” he murmured again, jerking back as it suddenly fluttered again, viscerally feeling the surge of power ripped from somewhere in his gut to his hands like the animal instinct of jerking away from a hot pan or the way the body simply takes over during drowning. For a second, he panicked – he'd felt power, but power was a raw and unrefined concept. What had the power _done_?

Jerking his head back and forth to look for his new friend, he startled when something tickled his neck, glancing in the window to see his faint reflection... and the addition of someone else nestled in the crook of his shoulder.

“You scared me,” he confessed, sagging slightly against the wall of his window seat now the adrenaline was starting to vacate his body and leave him feeling simply tired. His hands laced together in his lap where his legs stretched out in front of him, and he sighed. “I don't know why I'm talking to a butterfly.”

He tilted his head back, letting out a deep breath. Did he really want to think about this on a Wednesday afternoon after a long day of school and an inarguable failure? Not really. But he was already halfway there, and his father's  _a man should know himself_ was refusing to leave him alone.

“I guess I don't have a lot of friends,” he stopped himself, grimacing slightly. It was easy to embellish the truth when he always embellished his sense of presence. So, he corrected himself. “I don't have any friends. So I don't talk very often, and you are _alive_ so I'm not talking to _myself_.”

A therapist would have a field day with him. What  _did_ therapists say about this? Rummaging in his pocket, he dragged up google on his phone, the screen adjusting for the different feel of his fingers without heavy leather inbetween. Moments later, he sighed again.

Inconclusive, and too many results based on whether or not animals  _understood_ . Was that what he asked, google? No. He was asking if he was losing his mind through self-inflicted isolation. Wings fluttered against his jawline again, settling a moment later, as if to remind him he wasn't on his own. Witches of old were rumoured to have familiars, weren't they? It couldn't be  _that_ odd.

“You haven't run from it yet, so...” he trailed off, reaching his hand up to rest it on his shoulder near Lily, slightly warmed when a very, very light weight settled on it a moment later. Maybe he hadn't made a terrible summoning mistake at all.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for your kind reception so far. <3

It was undeniably clear Misono's tutor had a burning ache to scold him, but lacked both the mental fortitude and the strength to do so. He was still relatively young, his robes not quite as well-worn and comfortable as those of his summoning lecturer, and his eyes seemed to skitter from Misono's unbending stare.

“Is something the matter?” Misono tilted his head very slightly to the side in obvious question, but the tilt was to the left to avoid crushing Lily who slumbered comfortably on his shoulder, tucked away in the folds of his cloak's high collar. It was undoubtedly an outdated fashion, but Misono came from an old, old line that had every right to cling to past status symbols. He adjusted the collar for Lily's comfort while his tutor swallowed, opened his mouth once, and shut it again.

Misono wasn't stupid, and that was his tutor's primary problem. To accuse the son of a donor, the son of a noble line of illegal activities without a scrap of proof would be a terrible thing to do. He smiled at his tutor in a perfunctory manner, less true smile than smug triumph.

“I'll be late for my classes, Sir,” he offered, hands clasping together and the accusation buried in layers of his voice. The tutor cringed, his green eyes shutting for a moment longer than it took to pass it off as a blink as he seemed to steel himself.

“I don't understand why you'd take this risk,” his tutor said eventually, stepping closer to put a hand on Misono's shoulder and clasp it. It was such a very basic method of communication, of trying to spark an artificial feeling of a bond, that Misono would have scoffed if he weren't so irked at the carelessness of near-crushing his familiar. He allowed his tutor a moment to realize his mistake, tensing his shoulders to convey his displeasure. “You're such a good student, and the occult is illegal for a reason. I don't understand why you would do this.”

A moment of sadness seemed to flicker over the man's face. Some people got far too attached to students that were only their responsibility while it was earning them a salary. He almost rolled his eyes at the naivete before him. For  _power_ was an obvious answer and should have been the man's first thought. Misono was from a line of protectors, his ancestors shedding blood and giving lives to better the world around them and protect their loved ones, and Misono would do the same. It was, after all, his legacy. It was his duty to restore the magical influence of the Alicein family name when the magic had skipped generations before him. His seemingly fractured power, never bending to his whims despite his perfect intonation and neat spell circles, was only a problem to overcome. It was never a secret in their history classes that some of the greatest witches – some infamous witches – had supplemented their power with that of other creatures.

He was not above bargaining and binding, of bleeding his hand into a cup if the exchange was  _might_ and  _strength_ .

“I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” he said coolly, brushing the hand from his shoulder with a neat shrug and an open palm pushing his tutor away. He glanced at the door as the first bell rang, marking him late for his alchemy classes. He didn't mind; numbers came to him easily, the advanced mathematics no match for the challenge of forcing the runes to awaken for him. “I assume you will write me a note that you have caused me to be tardy with this conversation?”

Though he phrased it as a question, it was much more of a demand, and it showed in the sigh he received while he note was penned. Though Misono was grateful he had done no such thing, his tutor would have shown great wisdom in handing off the rumours to a more senior member of faculty to deal with.

“Thank you,” he said, face blank, and slipped through the partially open door, glancing down at the note in his hand. It simply said late, but did not specify _how_ late. He dawdled as he passed through some of the stone pillars of the academy's east building, the building rising with the high walls and windows of the gymnasium. It was unlikely anyone would see him dawdling along the garden's edge here, admiring the near-impossible range of flora cultivated by the botany professors both to teach students their craft and warn of the dangers. 

They seemed perfect for his purpose.

“Lily,” he murmured, keeping his voice soft. His butterfly seemed sluggish this past day, not tempted by things like sugar-water in the vein of bees, or by the Alicein gardens. Perhaps something here would tempt Lily to eat and regain his strength.

The ground made a slightly wet sucking noise when he stepped from stone to grass and coaxed Lily onto his gloved hands, baring him to different flowers he knew were safe for at least human consumption. It took him time before Lily seemed to concede, stepping into the mouth of a large, pale pink flower that still held drops of water from a morning's rain. When he finished he seemed, or at least Misono had convinced himself that he seemed, more energetic, making the way up Misono's arm to his neck on his own.

“I will take some cuttings before the weekend,” he promised, needing to research it and find a valid excuse for if he was caught. Hopefully it was a common plant, and wouldn't raise too many eyebrows. Picking up his pace he made sure to wipe his feet properly at the building entrance to hide traces of his misbehaviour, and slipped into his class as coolly as he could possibly manage.

*

He took his lunch in the library doing exactly that, hidden in a far corner of the natural sciences section with his lunch in front of him; sandwiches, for ease of edibility and a distinct lack of mess. He ate at it absently while he flicked through a dusty old tome, humming to himself when he found illustrations that almost matched but not  _quite_ . 

If pressed, he probably wouldn't be able to say what was on them other than that it stilled his growling stomach and did its job properly. Off to his left was Lily, occasionally fluttering to the open window set high and small on the wall, returning moments later with slightly colder legs to settle on Misono's bare forearm where he'd shed his jacket.

“I found it,” he told Lily under his breath, feeling silly that he was glad Lily seemed to understand and turned to skitter closer to the book and its faded illustration. There was nothing _special_ about this plant in any way. It was entirely ordinary. Dragging his finger down the page, he checked again to ensure he hadn't missed anything. Closing it slowly, giving Lily plenty of time to slip from its pages, he couldn't help but ask, “Are you just a picky eater?”

Of course he'd get no answer, but it was nice to not think of his words when alone with his familiar. The pleasant feeling slipped away as voices crowded the library, quickly shushed by the Head Librarian barking a displeased reprimand at them. They may come here to cause mischief, but they'd likely rather  _not_ leave with a set of librarians chasing them.

“Alicein,” one of them greeted as he rounded a corner, smoothing over the surprise of seeing him standing there, shrugging his cloak back on. He was an ordinary looking boy, Misono's age and entirely unremarkable save for when he reminded everyone that he was part of a magical line. His smarmy attempts at friendship were easy to brush off, but Misono could almost sense that if his family had not slightly faded into obscurity in the past seventy years, he would have been hard pressed to escape the clique of people who thought themselves elite.

They were, in short, everything Misono did not want to be: ambitionless, soft with greed, full of undeserved pride of things they had no claim to.

“Hello,” he returned, polite because he couldn't afford to start feuds when he was lacking in allies. It would not have mattered if he had been as skilled as his great-great grandfather. “I'm sorry to say I was just leaving. I missed a small part of a morning class and I'd be loathe to ruin my good reputation by not apologizing profusely.”

It was an excuse, but a good one as excuses went. They would believe he went to apologize, but not out of the goodness of his heart. Charming professors enough that money could buy grades was common enough in an elite academy, and he was looking at some of the better players.

“A shame,” one of the pack said. He had dark hair and a pouty mouth that would be appealing if it wasn't set in such an entitled face.

“Agreed,” he stood, hiding Lily properly in his collar under the pretence of struggling to reach the proper shelf. He'd only just succeeded when the ringleader was standing too close to him suddenly; a warning crack of power surged through his skin unbidden, giving him goosebumps. It was only that he felt Lily move that he was reassured he did no damage. With an arm on either side of his head he was trapped.

Admittedly, his classmate – he had a name, Misono knew  _that_ , but what the name was escaped him – was taller, broader, and made good use of his stature when his body blocked in Misono. He stayed tense while he waited for the conclusion to this ridiculous tale, glimpsing past his classmate to see their clique carefully not looking as they blocked the few entrances to this corner.

“A _terrible_ shame,” his classmate intoned, not managing to sound sorrowful at all when he simply seemed smug, one hand trailing down to touch Misono's jaw. It sent another crack through his body, making his classmate jerk slightly, then laugh. “It's electric between us. Look...”

His voice trailed off on a drawl, standing far too close to Misono.

“I know you don't want to be caught up in the riff-raff either,” he started, drawing an unbidden frown to Misono's face despite his best efforts to keep it blank. His classmates were all the same; citizens to strive for progress for, and this one did not stand above the rest. “You really should consider coming to sit with us for lunch. It would be a _pleasure_ to get to know you.”

Misono almost cringed. Had his classmate been a kind person, an ambitious person, a person who shared his goals, he may have considered the lewd advances, but as it stood, his interest froze at a frosty subzero.

“We'll see,” he replied, his tone as icy as his feelings, making clear for once that he would not be tolerating them, lack of allies be damned. “I really must run to see the professor.”

Making use of their different statures, he barely had to duck to slide out from under the arm blocking him in, and his pointed march towards the weakest of the group – a first year – got him out easily to the point where he could just keep going until he reached the west gardens again.

Free and clear, he stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He really was terribly out of shape. A small flutter made him turn his head to see Lily resting on the wall close to him.

“That was... unpleasant,” he confessed. As a teenager, he'd of course entertained... _fantasies_ , vague and undetailed thanks to inexperience and a crippling shyness whenever his fingers tried to type a search, but it was his first time being _approached_ quite so boldly. It was a shame it was made by an undeserving rake. 

Standing, breath caught, he held out a hand for Lily to alight, and kept walking at a more moderate pace. 

“At least it's the weekend,” he said, following the haphazard path set between the plants. Watching Lily take off and flutter, seeming entirely at home, set off a pang of guilt in his chest at trapping an innocent creature to his side by magic. “Tomorrow, I'll do my best to unbind you.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

Misono had a headache. It was located somewhere towards the crown of his head and pounded a dull _throb, throb, throb_ through his tired brain. Two ibuprofen and a half-cup of coffee, given to him by a maid with disapproving eyes, had dulled it to at least a semi-tolerable level while the harsh glare of his laptop seemed to grow brighter the longer he stared at it.  
  
The complex spell-circle on his screen seemed to move before his eyes, something that was decidedly not meant to be happening. He blinked, squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, it stayed as still as it was meant to.  
  
Binding was complicated enough, all double-wordings that made a complex, invisible cage-and-leash, and unbinding was even harder.  
  
Not to mention, the way Misono's unfortunate magic had twisted, it was less trying to un-do a paragraph than it was trying to untangle a clump of at least 4 sets of headphones furiously tangled into more knots than the human mind could count.  
  
Pushing his laptop out of the way to cushion his head on his arms, he groaned out loud, head throbbing with the noise. A small comfort came in the feeling of tiny legs landing on his arm, feeling at the bits of his face still exposed to the air.  
  
"I didn't think it would be this hard," he grimaced, finally looking up to see Lily close by, antennas wiggling as if in reply. At least that could force a smile to his face, though his headache spread to temples. Even harder than simply unbinding, he had to work in a thousand types of vague fail-safes to return Lily to... an unidentified place. He groaned again, feeling soft butterfly legs tapping at his eyelids. Muffled by his sleeves, he mumbled, "A massage, Lily?"  
  
The feeling stopped for a minute, then seemed to return teasingly on the other eye until he sat up properly, turned down the brightness on his laptop, and flicked dispassionately through his notes. They were a mess, entirely different to his usual neat, colour-coded notebooks. Highlighter scattered randomly through the page to identify ideas that might work, though half of them were crossed out, scrapped after running into an unconquerable problem. The main thing was keeping it safe enough his erratic magic wouldn't harm Lily, making his spell circles even more complicated.  
  
"I could unbind you first," Misono said, partially to himself, but mainly to Lily. He tapped the end of his pen on the paper, leaving a tiny wet mark where he'd chewed on this pen in an anxious habit. He'd managed to break it for years as he learned to rigorously plan in his study hours, but whenever he came under stress it reared its ugly head. "But you'd have to promise not to run off. I can't send you back if you fly away."  
  
For a moment, he had a stare-down, man versus animal. He hesitated.  
  
"Flutter twice if you won't fly away?" he asked, feeling again slightly ridiuclous, but mildly mollified when Lily fluttered nicely for him. Reaching out a hand, he lifted and tucked Lily away again, and went on the hunt for something to tide him over when the clock told him he'd missed dinner.  
  
Somehow, a small trek ended with him washing dishes, up to his elbows in bubbly water, with his hair pinned back. He'd known their chef most of his life, since before she'd started getting arthritis in her hands, and he couldn't let himself walk away when she'd grimaced at the pile of dishes and rubbed at her hands. With her assistant out sick for the week with a bout of flu, there was only her left to do them.  
  
His baby food, his first meals, and every vegetable he'd learned to eat thanks to her painstaking efforts to find a way to make him enjoy them and grow accustomed had all come from her kitchen. If he didn't know already that she had little magic, he would have assumed she'd spelled him to eat his radishes. He thought for a moment for a tactful approach of something he'd been thinking for a while.  
  
"Wouldn't it be... I mean, isn't it... Don't you..." he trailed off, frustrated with himself. He could keep a stern face indefinitely around his father and stare down his harshest teachers, but being genuine entirely stumped him. His voice felt terribly small when he finally forced out his question. "Aren't you retiring soon?"  
  
Somewhere behind him, between the sounds of a magazine's pages flipping and the hallway clock tickings its loud passing of time, she laughed at him, not unkindly, but a laugh that came from the bottom of the soul.  
  
"The day I leave this kitchen is the day I'm dead," she told him in amusement, magazine flipping again. "No one wants to leave the thing or person they love."  
  
Humming in an agreement he wasn't sure he felt, Misono slid the last mug into the cupboard, clean and dried, and swapped the conversation to snack recommendations.  
  
The conversation haunted him throughout the rest of his evening as he drew out 3-dozen spell circles, saving only three in a nice .png format on his desktop for printing and pouring over with a fine-toothed comb, the rest scrapped and erased one after the other. He didn't really know what it was like to love something so much he'd never leave it. As cowardly as it was, he had even considered on occasion running away, shucking the weight of familial pressure from his shoulders and living a life as a non-magic user. The great axe of failure would no longer hover by his neck like a great, invisible guillotine waiting only for a stray whisper of his magic to loose it from its hold. He shook off the dark thoughts with a physical shiver up his spine, turning to focus his attention on what mattered. He hadn't run from his responsibilities before, pushing his magic by sheer force of will, and he wasn't running now from a failure bound to him.  
  
"I'm going to unbind you first," he informed Lily of his decision, feeling under his nightstand for the small silver key for the door that led to his workroom. When he flicked on the lights it was a well-lit staircase, leading him downwards to a part of the cellar reminiscent of the workrooms at the academy.  
  
Three of the suites in the mansion led to a similar room; his, and two guest rooms, one of which had been his great-grandfather's as the last person before Misono to have magic in the house. When he'd manifested, he'd been moved to one of the suites so he could practice in peace.  
  
He rarely did, preferring to hide his ill-formed magic from where prying eyes could spy, and instead allow his father to believe he performed perfectly, easily. As such the room smelled of disuse, largely only opened when he came down to ensure his supplies were stocked and not rotten, in case of emergencies.  
  
All stone walls, stone floors, with an inlay of lighter stone to make the family motto on each of the three walls without a door. The floor was instead smooth and concreted, worn by use but perfect for chalking spell circles. He taped his printed spell-circle on the wall where he could reference it, the runes from his original spell mingled in to many he wouldn't have known yet if he hadn't worked so far ahead in his summer holidays every year.  
  
It took him, in the end, two hours to create the spell circle, his hands sore from clutching the nub of chalk every time it wore away, his gloves set aside to avoid ruining them each time he brushed away and repeated a rune. He didn't want to think about higher level unbinding spell circles, but he certainly understood why so few scholars had ever managed to unravel the bindings on a hell-creature to send it back. Those were even more terrifying.  
  
"Sit in the middle," he murmured to Lily from his perch on the crown of Misono's head like a moving purple tiara. His hands rubbed together anxiously when Lily sat in the space created for him, waiting patiently. If he did this wrong, or if it went wrong, he could harm not just Lily and himself, but the staff around him in the house if the stone walls were not enough to hold. But this was his mistake to recitfy.  
  
Kneeling, he placed his hands at the edges of his spell circle, sparing a thought for his knees and all the soft, padded cushions he'd left upstairs. The thought was gone moments later when his mind filled itself with a thousand colours, like light falling through a twirling crystal, scattering refractions on every corner of his mind. In the hum of not-noise underneath was the soft heartbeat connecting him to Lily through their binding.  
  
The colours almost caught and trapped him, lost him in his own mind until he focused his thoughts on following the rhythm of Lily's heart, pushing through the colours to grasp at intricate shadows loosened from bedrock by his spellcircle for him to wrestle with. There were so many of them, his fingers clutched unbidden at the floor and wiped away a small break in the spell circle.  
  
The first shadow he clutched at was one he hadn't antipicated - it wasn't _his_ binding he was fighting with. It clutched back, making his vision go starry-white for a moment until he threw himself at it with all he had, feeling his well of magic jerk at the expenditure of power, something inside him roaring a pleasure at being used to full extent.  
  
He had to think, a difficult feat when he could feel claws at his incorporeal body. Who would put such a vicious binding on an animal? Opening his mouth to the echoing room, he let out streams of spells, esotoric and foreign on his tongue, but practiced well enough as a fail-safe for his original summoning, for him to banish back any vampires succesfully dragged into this world.  
  
The shadow shrieked at him, bird-of-prey high pitched and furious when its claws retracted, shrunk, until its existence snuffed out. He gasped for breath as its presence left his mind less crowded with shadows, but plagued with shock and doubt.  
  
He knew magic was about summoning life - something given soul with words and runes, fed by the caster's magic - but he had never so viscerally tangled with something that clearly thought and acted of its own volition like a human, rather than simply growing like windowsill watercress.  
  
"Are you quite alright?" a voice asked him, cool fingers feeling at his forehead, drifting over his closed eyelids. The lingered at his lips, surely feeling his heavy breath panting out. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes and look at what his magic had wrought this time, but it wasn't a guillotine, and that was good enough.  
  
When those fingers carded through his hair and brushed softly at his neck, he took another breath and let himself give in to drained-dry exhaustion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading so far, and for your support! next: what we've all been waiting for...


	4. Chapter 4

Misono thought _blond_. Misono thought _pretty_. Misono thought various words of profanity he would not utter, that didn't bear repeating.

He was comfortable, stretched out in his bed and under his covers; his thermostat was a few degrees higher than he usually put it on to sleep, somewhere around 24 or so. He was not quite laying down flat, instead slightly propped up, his head on someone's thigh. Their legs were comfortably spread, haphazard in their placement, as if their owner didn't have a thought for propriety in their head.

Fingers (presumably, they belonged to the same body as the legs) trailed along his collarbone, to his shoulders, then back again in nonsensical patterns. It felt like a trail of goosebumps followed the wake of the feather-light touches. If he were to look down, he almost expected to see his butterfly traipsing back and forth along his skin.

But he wasn't looking at that. Was, in fact, looking at a face. It had high cheekbones, a sharp nose, and thin eyebrows that looked nicely groomed. They had a distinct arch in them, and one missed a tiny chunk where a scar had nipped into the brow. Thin lips smiled at him - a pale, dusty pink, curled into a smile that seemed permanent. His eyes kept flicking back to other eyes, though; unnaturally, impossibly red, but even as they looked around the room, he couldn't see the edges of lenses.

It did occur to him, for a moment, that it was more than a bit unwise to be thinking contact lenses in the face of an odd man - certainly a man, despite the _pretty_ \- touching him, in his bed, and no recollection of ending up there.

His panic, however, bubbled up and was washed away under a wave of affection - the affection wasn't his, but it was for him? He shifted uncomfortably, trying to sit up at the intrusion into his feelings. The only time he ever felt that connected was when spellcasting, or clutching at his bone runes.

"Good morning," his... guest? told him, hands lifting to grip at Misono's shoulders to help him up and pull him back against the man's chest. Now he sat, he could feel his body's protests. He felt like he'd pulled every muscle he had, sore and uncomfortable. That binding had overtaxed him in no small way, and his reserves felt dangerously low; at least that explained why he hadn't lashed out magically: he had nothing left to give.

"Good morning," he replied by rote, politeness drilled into him as much as breathed, only usurped by a practiced arrogance and put-on superiority when the situation called for it. His mind went through a rolodex of options, flipping past _do not talk to strangers_ to a natural instinct to flee, and bypassed that to his father's lessons in conflict de-escalation. It wasn't a conflict yet, but, if this person was mad enough to sneak into his home, violence couldn't be far off. He smoothed his voice as much as he could, trying to think like the maids in the face of a furious visitor. "What are you doing here?"

He grimaced; too demanding, but, this was who he was and what he had. At least he hadn't out-right reprimanded the man. Instead of annoyance, the man sighed out a pleased noise and rested his chin on Misono's shoulder, leaning his head sideways until their heads touched too.

"The bond said you didn't want to be alone," he explained blithely, making absolutely no sense. There was an inkling of a bond, but a bond required two-party consent, and he couldn't recall giving himself to any blondes that talked too much and said too little. "And your reserves are so low! What would I do if you were attacked while I was somewhere else? I'd never forgive myself!"

His hands, leaving Misono's hips (when had they found his hips?), illustrated his story with vague gestures that made no sense to Misono. He was strictly of a people that didn't interrupt others unless with the express intention to be rude, and one's hands stayed firmly where they were meant to be. He frowned, looking at his hands where they lay folded, bare, in his lap. A cursory glance at his night stand found both pairs of gloves haphazardly left there.

"What do you mean?" he asked, trying to lean to the side and turn his head to get a better view, but they moved as one, as if the man was glued to him. He felt the flinch, though, and felt guilt sweep through him. He tried not to let it pass between them, plunging into his low magic reserves to throw up a mental wall, all brick and thorn. Another flinch behind him, a hurt noise.

"You didn't do it on purpose, then?" the man asked him, hands still, saddened. Misono tamped down on his guilt. Another sigh, the breath ghosting down the open collar of his nightshirt. His face flushed as he realized someone had changed him into his sleeping clothes. "You named me. No, no, wait."

The man murmured to himself for a moment, about time and the passing thereof and proper order. When he started again, his voice seemed clearer, an added hint of purposeful patience, and his hands covered Misono's without invite.

"You summoned me." he said, as if it was statement of fact, though Misono could recall no such thing. "Years ago - what, sixty? - my brothers and I... someone bound all of us to weaker forms, bound our power, for... reasons we can talk about later. I'd resigned myself to eternity. I was somewhere in Norway, seeing something of our world, since I wasn't going to accomplish much else as a butterfly... When I felt your binding call to me and tug, I let it take me. I suppose your magic was looking for any vampire with spare time and not much power."

He stopped to laugh, a nice, light sound that trailed off softly.

"I didn't expect it to be an Alicein, but I wasn't particularly disappointed. I knew your great grandfather, you know!" he exclaimed, one hand starting up its antics again. It didn't bother Misono; it was a speck in his peripheral vision while his mind tried to work through and accept the logical conclusion: Lily. "Then you named me, and took me home, and started promising to unbind you. I tried to warn you about the bindings, but I just didn't have the presence to send you the feeling. Or any sort of warning, really."

He grimaced, the feeling of his frown clear where their skin touched. It seemed genuine, truth leaking through past Misono's mental wall where it had fractured under his negligence and faltering will.

"When you tried to unbind me, you came up against the stronger binding. Well, of course - it was put there to stop any tampering, even if it was tampering with something that was added later on. I..." Lily hesitated. "I didn't think you'd manage it. Your energy signature is so fractured and weakened, I thought it would eat you alive."

He seemed almost upset; Misono's hands twitched with an unfamiliar urge to comfort.

"The bindings, I think, have warped? Instead of binding me to an animal body, they've taken the... suggestion of your binding, and bound me to you," Lily explain, finally sitting up straight, letting Misono breathe again. "Though I'm not complaining..."

And Misono had learned many things as a prodigal witch, a rich witch, and a boy with something to prove: nothing was impossible. And when he put his mind to it, it did feel like... well, Lily. But stronger. Overwhelming amounts of stronger, energy feeding into his magic reserves to fill up the emptiness. It was only natural; it was the exchange one took with vampire. Blood for power.

"My great grandfather?" Misono asked, focusing on the off-hand comment, because the past he could understand; he'd done much to latch on to his ancestors and their magical glory, and his great grandfather was the most attainable. "How did you know him?"

He managed to twist around, drawing his legs up to sit facing Lily. With the influx of energy, his aches slowly lightened; he supposed Lily's aura was something of a massage to his, as sordid as the idea seemed. Lily shrugged, hands on Misono again. Transfer of energy was easier with contact, he assumed.

"Familiars, vampires, demons, we're really all different incarnations of the same thing: a companion," Lily explained, eyes looking off to the side in memory. "His father - I suppose your great, great grandfather? - wanted a protector for his son, and a good one at that. And... there I was! You remind me of him, too. Just started asking me questions when witches older and wiser had gone running!"

He ended on a laugh, cutting off to cautiously look at Misono when he realized it may have been a bad idea to portray himself as some sort of terrifying. They'd barely met, after all. Well, Misono had hardly met him – it was with a grimace he recalled all the talking he'd done when alone with what he'd thought had only been a butterfly.

"That's why I was so surprised to see your energy so weak," Lily added, digging at an old wound that was nonetheless still fresh and gushing metaphorical blood. "No, no no no, not that face."

Lily's hands flew up to cup his cheeks, making him look ridiculous and slightly squashed.

"I wasn't criticizing you," he explained, softly - Misono couldn't pin-point the something in his eyes, but it reminded him of the nursemaids who would call him cute and dress him in lacy things. "I spent enough time with a forced binding to know one when I see one, and all I need is a closer look."

 


	5. Chapter 5

The problem wasn't that Lily gave him a headache. In fact, the problem was the exact opposite; his headache was gone. The ache somewhere in the pit of his soul was eased, his empty well filled again while Lily chattered comfortably about this and that; anecdotes about his brothers, about children he'd known, orphanages he'd seen. He certainly seemed as sociable as his easy body language hinted at. If he were honest, Misono was a little jealous of the ease with which Lily seemed to fit in his own skin, not once stopping to hesitate over his words for any other reason than simply finding the right word after not possessing vocal cords for a good half-century.  
  
"We're avoiding the topic."  
  
Misono pushed some pomegranate seeds around his plate with a tiny spoon, tempted to stab at one with the edge of the spoon and see if it would burst and splatter juice all over his plate. He liked pomegranates, but they were messy. And distracting - they'd been avoiding the awkward topic of his binding since someone had brought Misono breakfast and Lily had promptly shapeshifted, leaving him to fall bonelessly into a pile of cushions without the support at his back that he'd unwittingly come to lean on. His stung pride stopped him from bringing it up in a scolding tone - from a few hours' conversation, he could almost bet his inheritance on the fact that Lily would blithely ignore a scolding and focus on the fact Misono had given in to Lily's warm embrace.  
  
Across from him, Lily shrugged. He had one elbow resting on the table, his chin on his hand and his eyes too focused on the way Misono ate. He picked at a bowl of cereal that was already much too soggy to be enjoyable and deserved nothing but to be thrown out with a horrified shudder.  
  
"I sprung that on you," Lily said, a hint of guilt to the way he shrugged again, eyes sliding away to look at their window seat. They had, after all, shared it for long afternoons and one-sided conversations recently. "You'd bring it up when you were ready. And, well, I was right. Wasn't I?"  
  
He smiled brilliantly, the robe Misono had foisted on him falling from his shoulder through a combination of improper size and improper wear. He hadn't even belted it; Misono snapped out another demand to close it while it was his turn to avert his eyes.  
  
"I suppose you were," he admitted, and ran over the information in his head again. He couldn't be surprised - he'd asked for a vampire, and he'd gotten a vampire, in a roundabout way. He steeled himself, Alicein pride in his spine. "But I'm ready to continue our conversation."  
  
He laid down his spoon, crossing his arms, and startled instead when Lily stood - holding his robe closed only as an afterthought.  
  
"Then, after you," Lily waved an arm towards Misono's bed, drawing a frown from him. He laughed in response, approaching until Misono put the barrier of a teacup between them on instinct. Somehow, he felt confident that Lily was at once like a wildcat, untameable and stealthy, and a housecat of no danger to him. His warning look steered Lily away from a comment over picking up on the feeling, and back on track. Lily gestured again, his hands firmly at his side afterwards. "I'm going to have to find the binding to take a good look at it. You can lay on the floor if you want, but I doubt you'd like to."  
  
He had a point there - even carpeted, Misono wasn't accustomed to laying on floors. At least he had pyjamas to shield him as he sat on his bed, one knee drawn up to his chest.   
  
"Front or back first?" Lily asked him, as though musing over it. The decision was, of course, wholly arbitrary. Bindings could be put anywhere, and would sink from view until specifically called upon.  
  
"Back," he decided on a whim, so he'd have a moment to get used to the odd sensation of being looked at so closely. "How will you find it?"  
  
Normally, calling up a binding required its own small spell-circle. It functioned neatly as a precaution against prying eyes, though he didn't know if it was intentional. If it was, he had to commend the maker of it for both their brilliance in the idea, and for their marketing genius in making it so widespread that it was virtually impossible to think of a binding that functioned different. He briefly wondered where Lily's was, since his binding had merged into the other one that someone else had put there.  
  
A cold hand touch the bottom of his left foot, quickly withdrawn at his flinch, and returned moments later with warmer fingers and a murmured apology.  
  
"Different magic," Lily told him, sounding distracted as the fingers crawled to his ankle. He hadn't thought it would involve this much... touching. "Witches, vampires, demons... I guess we're like eggs."  
  
Despite his ludicrous comments, Misono shivered as the fingers lifted his legs one by one to slide the pant leg up to his mid thigh, leaving his calves and knees open to the exploration.  
  
"Actually," Lily laughed suddenly, fingers stilling from where they'd tickled the back of Misono's kneecap. "That's a terrible metaphor. I'm not even sure what I was thinking with that. We all have magic, but it's different kinds of magic. I guess..."  
  
He faltered for a second, humming a slow, low noise.  
  
"Different kinds of eggs. You can do the same thing with duck eggs as you can do with quail eggs, but that egg comes from a different place, and the flavour's different," he tried to explain, sounding a little amused at his own failed rhetoric by the time he finished. The bed creaked under him when he kneeled forwards to grasp at Misono's left hands. Some magic crackled there, startled, but it hardly seemed to phase Lily as he explored from wrist to elbow to shoulder, then the same on the other side.  
  
In a way, it was soothing. His entire task was to lay still and do nothing, and to do it in his bed... he couldn't help it when his body relaxed within permission.  
  
"Nothing," Lily huffed out a frustrated sigh, fingers slowing on their path from neck to lower back... then under his shirt. With fingertips near his waistband, Misono could at least say he was no longer accidentally relaxed. They lingered there for a moment, simply hot, as if branding their impression into him, before they moved. The bed jerked slightly, shook as if someone had made a sudden movement. They stilled again a moment later, before the silence broke to Lily's excitement. "Found it!"  
  
Tugging at Misono's shirt, he managed to get it to his chest before Misono's spluttering protests and tangled arms stopped him and slowed them down enough for him to take it off himself. As he sat, discarding the shirt to the other side of his bed, he tried to twist around and catch a glimpse of the binding, but it was placed too high, and he rarely stretched enough to be anything close to agile.   
  
"It's so fractured," Lily touched at it again, seeming fascinated by the shape of it. "I'm amazed it's still even functioning."  
  
He shook his head then, the swish of his hair catching Misono's eye, hiding and displaying Lily's sharp jaw and pink lips with every motion.  
  
"It was well made, though," he confessed, fingers finally retreating to rest instead on Misono's knee. "It just... didn't anticipate just how strong you are. How strong you can be, without this."  
  
A small, fond smile curved his lips. It was a nice smile, on nice lips. Misono liked that he'd caused it, if not on purpose.  
  
"I can't break a binding on myself," Misono admitted, frustration creeping in at the edge that he'd need a third party's help. He loathed asking for help. His professors could at least be bribed, though - they'd proven that over and over. A hand on his chin broke him from his thoughts, and the apologetic look on Lily's face spelled both that he'd been prying in his thoughts, and had bad news. It was unfair that Lily could read him like an open ocean, but Lily was as closed as a dam.  
  
"I've had years of practice," Lily comforted, letting go of Misono's chin. "But this, well... education may have changed in the past seventy-five years, but this is a higher level."  
  
An implication hung in the hair, seeming to wait for him to catch on. When he simply looked, rifling in all the wrong ideas, an idea pushed itself to the forefront instead. He glanced at Lily, the focused, eager look on his face making clear that he'd put it there on purpose. He shouldn't have, because it was clearly lifted from the locked recesses of Misono's mind.  
  
He hadn't thought of his brother's face in years. Not since a few months after he'd upped and ran away without so much as a goodbye, leaving information only to filter back through distant friends that he'd given up traditional witchery and instead fallen into the discipline of gun-mages; it was a near-impossible craft, focused instead on esoteric rune-circles and the borrowed magical essence of other creatures. It was an expensive craft for that same reason - few creatures would part with their magic cheaply. Part of him resented Mikuni for caring so little as to never see him again after his disappearance... and the other part envied him for his bravery in escaping the shackles of legacy.  
  
"No," he muttered sharply, turning to slide from his bed - and found himself instead caught by remorseful arms and lips pressed against his temple in a chaste kiss.  
  
"I'm sorry, then," Lily told him, holding tighter at the feelings overwhelming Misono's young heart that he'd never taken the time to heal. "We'll find another way. We'll research until the summer, and then we'll break this binding."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what a month, man. thank you all for your patience. <3

"This is getting us nowhere," Misono snapped closed a book full of faded, useless lettering. Dust became a musty cloud wrapping around his head until he sneezed over and over until he was tugged from the cathedral library to the garden by Lily's helpful hands and soft laughter.  
  
-  
  
Sometimes, he couldn't focus on the archaic runes, because it required dictionaries and Lily leaning in close to help semi-identify where they might be, his chest pressed to Misono's shoulder so he could get close enough to the faded text to see, and the scent of him would hit Misono like a brick wall. He smelled mild, welcoming, a little bit sweet. He smelled like an elegant invite that beckoned him to nuzzle at Lily's neck and chase that scent with teeth and tongue, leaving a livid purple kiss-mark and beg for one in return.  
  
Sometimes, he woke in a cold sweat of dreams of just doing that, frantic and half-asleep to feel for the connection between them and reassure himself the wall between them held firm and his feelings hadn't fell through the cracks to Lily's psyche and given him away.  
  
-  
  
It took two months for the nagging voice in his own head to wear him down and convince him his approach of books wasn't working; they were too modern or too faded, with all the books he needed locked away in grander archives than he could buy his way in to with his monthly allowance, generous as it was.  
  
He sighed, leaning back in his desk chair - a hard-wood thing, richly padded and imposing to anyone who would someday seek a private audience with him and sit before him - and rubbed at his eyes. Hands landed on his shoulders, rubbing softly at the knots of tension there.  
  
"Do you know where my brother is?"  
  
-  
  
Wherever his brother was, he was tired already of the complex network of leads he had to follow, phone calls he had to make to frosty voices unwilling to help him until he spent hours buttering them up, using every slick turn of phrase he'd seen his father employ over dinner tables with rich CEOs looking to make the cheapest business deal they could while still getting a maximum of profit.   
  
-  
  
"Thank you for your help," he offered, hands around a new coat, horrible and gaudy but exactly like what Lily kept looking at when their interests flagged and their hunt through Google for contact numbers associated with vague names faded a bit. He caught on to electronics quick, but he hadn't quite grasped InPrivate browsing yet, and the awful thing came up again and again in their search history when Misono tried to find an old website on his laptop again.  
  
Lily graced him with a smile - wide, beautiful, slow but burning like a wildfire - and kissed both his cheeks, shrugging it on and turning in a circle to show it off. Its jagged bottom edge done in some semblance of a spiked pattern offended Misono's aesthetic senses, but in a weird way he liked it. Face flushing - when was the last time he'd blushed? - he turned back to his computer, and pointedly did not think about getting Lily more gifts under the guise of thank-yous to enjoy more smiles.  
  
\-   
  
"Why isn't he just listed in the phone book?" Misono grumbled another week later, head hurting from flexing his poor French, mouth sore from twisting around unfamiliar syllables. Lily echoed his sigh, leaning his head on Misono's shoulder as if he could soothe his sore mind again. He seemed to do that often; increase proximity the more intense Misono's feelings were.  
  
"I didn't think this day and age used phone books," Lily said, picking up Misono's phone to reply to some texts. He was the much better texter of the two of them, and an alarming number of people seemed to consider themselves on speaking terms with him in the academy hallways. "I'm surprised you checked."  
  
Misono stilled, shoulders tensing. He hadn't. Neither of them had. He paused to dislodge Lily before hunting in the downstairs broom closet for the phonebook they got yearly. He hissed when he flipped to A, his own name not yet there, but his father's emblazoned on the page, and beneath it, his brother's. He could barely bring himself to believe it was real rather than hallucination when he got back to his bedroom and sat with his phone in his hand and the number almost mocking him.  
  
"Take your time," Lily told him, a smile playing on his lips. It should have grated that he knew Misono this well - his hesitation being noticed would give him the push he needed to do it - but he could really only be appreciative. When it rang, he almost wanted to hang up, the only thing stopping him a warm gaze on him and a hand on his free wrist. He'd not thought much of how often Lily casually touched him.  
  
"Alicein Antiques," a smooth voice answered, sounded a little out of breath, as if the man had run to answer the phone or was in the middle of something.   
  
"Uh," Misono started smartly. "I'm looking for Mikuni."  
  
Silence reigned on the other end, as if waiting for more.  
  
"My brother."  
  
The silence took on a more surprised tone after a quickly muffled gasp.  
  
"Well," the voice said, sounding contemplative. Lost for words, but looking for them.  
  
"I need to see him," Misono spelled it out, easier to find his commanding voice when dealing with a simpleton who couldn't even string a sentence together.  
  
"He's not here," the voice sounded genuinely sorry, humming at him for a second. "But I think for you, he'll come over. I'll get back to you."  
  
With that, he hung up the phone, and it took all Misono had to not call back and demand a better story than simply being told to wait. He passed the phone off before his patience could snap, unsure of which pocket it disappeared in to.  
  
"He won't leave you waiting long," Lily comforted, sounding much surer than Misono felt after being only a single degree of separation from his brother. What on earth was he going to say when they met again?


	7. Chapter 7

It felt odd, eventually, to see Mikuni again. He seemed at once taller and shorter than Misono's memories; he'd grown from teen to man in the time since he'd fled their home, but Misono was no longer a child gazing up in adoration. Part of it also lay in Mikuni's companion, a good head taller than him already, accentuated by the paper bags stacked up and up and up like a bargain variety of a jester's painted face.

At once, the mundanity of it looked laughable and cheap, but terrifying for simply existing. No one of sound mind would set themselves up to live like this, and the volatile implications unnerved him. It wasn't something Misono had factored into meeting, even when he'd dared think of it.

"Well," Mikuni smiled at him, bright and wide but fake - perhaps it would have tricked someone who didn't have cherished memories. "I guess vampires run in the family."

"Our great-grandfather had one too," Misono fell back on facts and trivia for want of things to say - was he meant to throw himself joyfully into Mikuni's arms, yelping like an abandoned puppy? Probably not; they'd never been a normal family. Despite that he couldn't bring himself to be tense, instinctively soothed by the nearness of shared blood. He turned slightly, beckoned Lily from the bush where he'd sat in wait in case danger presented itself in the park where they'd agreed to meet during a few sparse text messages. His brother's tall companion had turned to face the bush almost immediately, head tilting to the side until the mocking faces teetered dangerously. "He knew Lily, in fact."

In a blurring of shapes that smelled oddly like amber, Lily showed himself and grinned, eyes not on Mikuni, but the way the tall figure still seemed to watch him, fingers trailing along the handles of his guns in a soft caress.

"No need to be like that," Lily laughed, fearless in stepping closer, coat slid from his shoulders for no good reason. It hung near his wrists, the ends on the floor, his bare arms trying to brush against Mikuni's vampire. It seemed reasonable to be annoyed at the interaction when it was his gift in the park's dirt. "We're brothers, too, after all!"

Mikuni's vampire slid from the affectionate touch in a fluid movement of black skirts and tense shoulders.

"This is Jeje," Mikuni mentioned, having stepped sideways to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Misono while they watched their vampires move a little freer than usual, striking out with power here and there to try to gain the upper hand. "I don't think I've seen him have this much fun, since... well, since a story that's for a different time."

He shook his head at Misono's inquisitive look and instead led them to a picnic table, sitting on the bench with his back to the table. It seemed much kinder on his long-enough legs to leave them free than to cram them in such a narrow space. Misono folded one leg under him when he sat and rested his hands folded on his knee to project an air of calm he didn't feel.

Really, he wanted to ask a great many questions - how was the American wasteland? How was it, being a gun-mage? Had he thought of Misono at all? Why hadn't he written? Did he think of home? Why was there an antiques shop, so close to them? How had he gained a vampire? Eventually, pushing his thoughts aside to rest where he could comfortably ignore them, he asked instead, "You know runes now, don't you?"

An obvious question, but Mikuni's face lit nonetheless, and within seconds two beautiful, engraved pistols were on the table between them, one of them opened and the... clip? Magazine? Misono didn't know, but it was quickly emptied so Mikuni could hold up the bullets and show him the esoteric, complex runes on them, his words moving twice as fast as before in his explanations that made Misono's head spin. He almost felt inadequate despite his high achieving at the academy, but reminded himself gun-mages were almost as rare as wild tigers.

"I need you to look at something, then," he asked - or, well, informed - when Mikuni paused to reload his empty gun, and start on the other. Different guns, different purposes. He paused half-way and clicked the cartridge back in place, his brown eyes locked on Misono's. It was a bit intense to be under the full scrutiny of someone's gaze. He stood in a poor excuse to break the eyecontact, but he could feel the weight of that look on him nonetheless. He shed his coat, and was working on his shirt buttons when Jeje came to stand sentinel by the side of the picnic table, and Lily shrugged his coat back on to sit on the actual table, one leg crossed over the over with enough space to lunge and drag Misono out of the way of danger if need be. While his safety comforted him, it also soothed him to have Lily dressed and less eager to touch someone else. For as much as Misono had halfheartedly scolded his tactile nature, seeing it in play with another - brother or not - left him bitter.

He folded his shirt neatly when it was finally off, and sat again to let Mikuni gaze on it properly. Cold fingers lingered on a mark here and there, interrupted occasionally by a hum or a murmur in languages Misono didn't speak.

"I'll have one of these too, then..." Mikuni eventually concluded, and looked to Jeje, then Lily, beckoning to Lily to search him for the binding. It was much more... formal, when Lily ran his hands up Mikuni's back, more clinical. It wasn't long before Lily hummed out a confirmation, and Mikuni tried to twist as Misono had to see the seal. "Same place, even."

He sat down heavily, whatever thoughts he had remaining private. A shiver ran through Misono as a chill wind swept past them. For once, he was thankful when Lily slid close and crept an arm around his shoulders, rubbing lightly to warm his cold skin.

"It's definitely generational," Mikuni had his eyes closed and his head leaned back, but one of his guns curled in his fingers nonetheless. "It's fraying, but it's half-way a curse, half-way a binding. Whoever put it together was talented, but this kind of thing... it would have been so new that it would've been impossible to predict what would happen down the line. The only thing I can say for sure is that it's malicious."

He opened his eyes, blinking into the faint sun, and leaned forward, elbows on his knees and a sigh on his lips.

"I suppose you've tried to break it?" Mikuni asked, no hope for a contrary answer in his voice, so he took the shake of Misono's head in stride, and twirled one of the braids that had slipped over his shoulder. "Then I suppose our only choice is to go and ask the people who might know why someone would curse our bloodline."

He stood, clapping his hands together, startling Lily.

"Do you remember where the family's buried?"

Luckily for them Misono could remember, even if he wished he knew at what point along the line he'd lost his common sense and swapped it for the courage to traipse into another realm.


End file.
